I work in silence, cleaning and dressing, and somewhere in the middle of it I lose the clinical detachment I came in with.
It happens gradually. The antiseptic is done, the wound is clean, and now it’s just his hand in mine—warm, still, heavier than I expected—and I’m wrapping the bandage in slow, careful loops, and I am acutely, uncomfortably aware of every point of contact. The ridge of his knuckles under my thumb. The particular texture of his skin, rougher at the palm, smoother toward the wrist. The way he doesn’t pull away, doesn’t shift, just lets me do this like he’s decided to trust the next sixty seconds to me completely.
My hands slow without my permission.
I tell myself it’s precision. That I’m being careful. That this is what thorough looks like. It’s a lie, and I know it the moment I think it.
There’s something about the stillness of him—the way he receives touch like it’s a thing he hasn’t had in a long time and doesn’t know what to do with—that makes me want to be slow. Deliberate. Like if I rush it, I’ll break something neither of us can name.
I smooth the bandage down. Run my thumb along the edge once. Twice.
I stop. Look up and find him watching me. Not the way people watch when they’re waiting for something to happen. The way they watch when something already has and they’re deciding what to do about it.
His eyes don’t move from my face, and I feel it the way you feel a change in temperature—gradual, then all at once.
The silence between us has a texture now. Something that wasn’t there this morning when I woke up to the smell of cinnamon and told myself today would be the same as yesterday.
He pulls back first. “You need to sleep in a bedroom.”
I blink. The shift is so abrupt it takes me a second to catch up. “I’m fine where I am.”
“You’re sleeping on the floor.”
“It’s a very nice floor.”
“There’s a room up the stairs. To the left.” A pause. “Next to the seasons room. You can have it.”
I look at him. “You’re giving me a room without a steel door?”
“The door has a lock.”
“How generous.” I set the remaining gauze down on the counter. “I’ll stay here.”
“I’m not asking.”
“And I’m not moving.” I meet his eyes. “So unless you’re planning to drag me up there yourself, we’re at an impasse.”
Something shifts in his expression. Anger, maybe… or something closer to the edge of it.
“Dragging you upstairs is real fucking tempting right now.”
The words land and sit there. I know what he means. I also know—and this is the part that crawls under my skin—that my mind went somewhere else with it first. Just for a half second. Just long enough to matter.
I hold his gaze and say nothing, which is its own kind of answer.
“Fine.” He says it like it costs him nothing. “But the room is open if you change your mind.”
I watch him turn back to the oven. “Open? Almost feels like I’m working my way up the corporate ladder.”
He doesn’t respond. Doesn’t give me even the edge of a reaction.
The oven timer goes off. He grabs a kitchen towel, pulls the tray out, sets it on the counter to cool. Then he finds the oval serving dish—he knows where it is without looking, which I file away without comment—and begins transferring the muffins one by one.
I watch his hands.
He places each one with the same deliberate precision, equal distance apart, perfectly spaced, the kind of arrangement that isn’t about presentation. It’s about order. About control. About the comfort of things that stay exactly where you put them.
He doesn’t rush. Doesn’t adjust once they’re down. Each one lands right the first time.
